A virtual machine clone is a copy of an existing virtual machine, which may duplicate the state of the virtual machine at the instant of a cloning operation. When the cloning operation is complete, the virtual machine clone is a separate, independent virtual machine. With virtual machine clones, one can make many copies of a virtual machine from a single installation and configuration process. Virtual machine clones may be useful, for example, when you must deploy many identical virtual machines to a group.
Virtual machine cloning may add complexity to license and asset management in enterprise computing systems, however. For example, virtual machine cloning may cause issues for license policies that take into account the amount of active and/or or powered-on virtual machines. This is especially true with virtual machines that do not have network connectivity, as license management has typically been performed over the network.